A large portion of today's telecommunication occurs over connectivity components which employ modular connectors such as, for example, RJ45 plugs and jacks. These modular connectors are commonly used in conjunction with twisted-pair cables which provide a reliable means for transmitting electronic data over small, medium, and large distances.
To maintain a level of interoperability, both the connectors and cables must adhere to well-known standards. For instance, the commonly referred-to RJ45 connector is standardized as the IEC 60603-7 8 position 8 contact (8P8C) modular connector with different categories of performance. With respect to cables, ANSI/TIA defines categories of unshielded twisted pair cable systems, with different levels of performance in signal bandwidth, attenuation, crosstalk, insertion loss, return loss, etc. Generally speaking, the increasing category numbers correspond to cable systems suitable for higher rates of data transmission. However, with the increased rates of transmission often comes the difficulty of meeting the performance specifications defined by the TIA specifications while staying within the physical constraints defined by the IEC standard.
One particular area of concern that becomes prominent in high speed communication systems is the ability to effectively cancel crosstalk. It is well known that per communication standards, plugs are typically tuned to produce some levels of crosstalk (usually referred to as “offending crosstalk”) and jacks are designed to produce an approximately equivalent amount of opposite crosstalk (usually referred to as “compensating crosstalk”). The net effect is that offending crosstalk is substantially cancelled when the plug and jack are mated together. With RJ45 connectors, crosstalk compensation can generally be simplified by shortening the effective distance between the crosstalk in the plug and the crosstalk compensation in the jack. Shortening of this distance simplifies the jack crosstalk compensation by reducing the phase delay between the crosstalk in the plug and the opposite polarity crosstalk compensation in the jack. If the physical distance between the plug crosstalk and jack crosstalk compensation converged to the same point in time and had equivalent magnitudes, theoretically there would be no residual crosstalk over all frequency ranges. Since phase delay is a function of frequency (increasing with frequency) and an RJ45 jack typically needs to be tuned for a range of frequencies (e.g., 1 to 500 MHz for CAT6A), reduction of the above-mentioned phase delay tends to translate into a jack that is able to operate at an increased bandwidth. Conversely, jacks operating at increased frequencies or within increased frequency ranges must reduce the phase delay in order to effectively reduce or cancel the plug crosstalk. However, achieving such reduction in distance can be difficult in view of the current standards.
For example, referring to FIG. 1 which illustrates a cross-section view of an exemplary conventional RJ45 plug 20 mated with a conventional RJ45 jack 25, IEC-60603-7:2010 defines the preferred electrical mating point between an RJ45 male and female connector. In particular, it specifies that:                a plug contact 30 height (K2) from the bottom surface of the plug 20 to the top of the mating interface is in the range of 6.15 mm to 5.89 mm (0.242″ to 0.232″);        a plug contact 30 radius (J2) at a preferred electrical mating point is in the range of 0.64 mm to 0.38 mm (0.025″ to 0.015″),        a plug contact depth (C2) from the front plug stop is in the range of 0.46 mm to 0.03 mm (0.018″ to 0.001″);        a distance between the contact point and plug comb clearance point 35 (the point at which PICs (plug interface contacts) 40 are not constrained within plug combs 45 of plug housing in the rearward direction) is in the range of 0.635 mm to 3.175 mm (0.025″ to 0.125″); and        a distance between the contact point and plug comb clearance point 52 (the point at which plug interface contacts (PICs) 40 are not constrained within plug combs 45 of plug housing in the forward direction) is in the range of 0.635 mm to 3.175 mm (0.025″ to 0.125″).As a result of these and other limitations, the electrical mating point location between PICs (plug interface contacts) 40 of the jack 25 and plug contacts 30 of plug 20 is denoted, in FIG. 1, as 55. This point 55 is approximately in the IEC-60603-7:2010 preferred electrical mating point location.        
The distances outlined above define a theoretical minimum distance a signal must travel to escape the boundaries of an RJ45 plug assembly 20. This is important as this distance adds a time delay which results in the aforementioned phase shift between the crosstalk in the RJ45 plug assembly 20 and the compensation in the RJ45 network jack 25, thereby limiting the effectiveness of the jack compensation.
Thus, there continues to be a need for improved plug and jack designs which help reduce the distance between the plug and the jack crosstalk while still maintaining compatibility with defined standards.